10 thoughts on “Happy to see harmony.”

Let’s hope it’ll become a perpetual harmony 🙂
I’ve read some discussions about ES4 vs. ES3.1 and they were not very nice. When I see what Microsoft is currently doing for CSS in Internet Explorer 8, I hope Internet Explorer 9 will not only see a shiny DOM implementation, but also serve as a milestone for the new ECMAScript.

I think the biggest problem and source of uproar was caused by Microsoft not saying anything for a year about ES4 (on hindsight, it appeared to have been by a missed passing of the torch process) then suddenly coming and saying ‘ES4 is no good, we’ll develop ES3.1 independently’.

On one hand, there was a TC developing a very ambitious (visibly too ambitious) ES4 specification, and on the other hand MS merely fixing their (sorry, that’s unfortunately true) outdated ES3.0 compliant engine…

I’d say that the fight was bad, but the result was good:
– the TC will create a workable ECMAscript solution
– MS will comply with a more recent ECMAscript revision

On a side note, is it possible to update JScript to make it support MIME-types like ‘application/ecmascript’ with a newer version? This could even be used to enable a better compatibility approach:
– if legacy ‘text/javascript’ is used, use current Jscript
– if correct ‘application/ecmascript’ is used, use newer (or user installed, like SpiderMonkey, if I’m not mistaken) engine.

Hopefully IE9 will included some of the new features in JavaScript 1.6-1.8 like function expressions, let, array extras, etc as well as support for the standard DOM like addEventListner. Developers have been asking Microsoft for standard DOM support for years.

Hi Chris, several msdn library pages don’t display correctly with IE 8 Beta 2. Here is an example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc294738.aspx
The content part is empty. Click + a few times and you see that the content is displayed “offscreen” below the normal page boundaries (don’t know how to explain better – you should see when you try)
I use Windows Server 2008 x64. I had no IE beta on this machine. I tried Tools->Options->Advanced : “Restore advanced settings” and “Reset” – restarted IE, no change.
I was so overwhelmed with beta 2 but without MSDN library this is hard for a developer.

If you can reproduce this, please forward this “bug report” to the devs in question.

Totaly unrelated but since you are mentioning Dion Almaer and Brendan Eich it reminded me… I was hoping to see you at the Boston Ajax Experience conference… especially seeing as you guys are releasing IE8 this year… I was saddened to see you do not appear as a panelist in any of the talks.

@JeromeLapointe – In short, I wasn’t asked. That sounds bitter, and TOTALLY not – I’m a little burned out on travel right at the moment. But I did get to sit on the Web 2.0 Expo panel with Brendan and Ojan from Google, moderated by Dion and Ben Galbraith, and that was (seriously) fun.